{"id":12200,"date":"2023-09-17T15:33:05","date_gmt":"2023-09-17T10:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesofpowerandvoice.com\/?p=12200"},"modified":"2023-09-17T15:33:05","modified_gmt":"2023-09-17T10:03:05","slug":"niharika-is-the-pune-chapter-winner-of-the-tie-womens-global-contest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesofpowerandvoice.com\/?p=12200","title":{"rendered":"Niharika Is The Pune Chapter Winner Of the TiE Women\u2019s Global Contest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Pune: <\/strong>At the chapter finals held on August 25, Volar Alta, a drone aggregator start-up founded by Niharika Kolte, was declared the winner by a panel of four eminent judges: Ankita Vashisht, founder of StrongHer Ventures; Arvind Chinchure, board member of Deshpande Start-ups; Madhuar Bhatia, managing partner of Pentathlon Ventures; and Pravin Bhagwat, founder of 14 Trees Foundation.<br><br>TiE has been holding a Global Contest for female-led start-ups for the past three years. This year, the contest witnessed a record\u00a0participation of all 61 chapters across the globe.\u00a0Like every year, TiE Pune saw an increase in the number of companies that participated, to a total of 71.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;<br>Niharika, who was elated at this win, said, &#8220;This has been really good for my company. After being declared the winner, I was approached by two VCs who are now interested in evaluating us. I must thank my mentors, Ramesh Maheshwari and Vineet Patni, as well as Kiran Deshpande and Vivek Gupta, who helped me refine my pitch deck and presentation. I will now be allocated other mentors for the global pitch.&#8221;<br><br>Speaking at the event, Ankita Vashisht said, &#8220;I believe that women must have access to capital to succeed and should develop a strong network. Look around you, and you will see the Boys\u2019 Club that fosters networking. Women too need this, which is why I strongly advocate this for women entrepreneurs.&#8221;<br><br>The first runner-up was Jilma Perungvat, and the second runner-up was Manasi Khasnis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br>Jilma\u2019s start-up Kozhnosys has developed a newer way of testing for breast cancer: a woman\u2019s breath. Says Jilma, &#8220;We have developed a prototype and want to start trials in Pune and later the country. Such competitions are a great way to get visibility for start-ups like mine. I have received great interest from VCs as well as a diagnostic lab,&#8221; said Jilma.<br><br>Second Runner-up BioMarkIQ, co-founded by Manasi Khasnis, has developed a more accurate and faster way to diagnose lung disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br><br><a>All chapter winners from 61 TiE chapters will participate in the global round to be held soon in Singapore.&nbsp;<\/a>The winner of this contest will take home USD 25,000 equity-free prize money. Apart from this, she will be mentored by world leaders and gain access to TiE\u2019s global network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br>Parul Ganju, who co-chairs this women\u2019s initiative at TiE Pune, says, &#8220;I feel women entrepreneurs have a clear vision as well as the discipline to grow. We want to put them center stage and amplify their voices so that they can push beyond the boundaries.<br><br>\u201cOur very experienced Charter Members have worked with great&nbsp;dedication with all our start-up founders and I want to let every&nbsp;woman who has won and not won know that this is just the beginning.&nbsp;Great things lie ahead if you continue with sincerity and dedication&nbsp;that you all have shown so far.\u201d<br><br>Darshan Rathod, also co-chair, said, &#8220;I am very excited to see such strong participation from women (71 this year) for our global contest. Simply giving these women a platform to showcase their impactful start-ups can do a lot to remedy the social biases that exist.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br>Even though only the chapter winner is eligible to compete at the global finale, TiE Pune will send the two<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>runners-up to Singapore too. &#8220;Being at that event helps in many ways, the most important being networking,&#8221; says Parul.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pune: At the chapter finals held on August 25, Volar Alta, a drone aggregator start-up founded by Niharika Kolte, was declared the winner by a panel of four eminent judges: Ankita Vashisht, founder of StrongHer Ventures; Arvind Chinchure, board member of Deshpande Start-ups; Madhuar Bhatia, managing partner of Pentathlon Ventures; and Pravin Bhagwat, founder of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pune"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesofpowerandvoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesofpowerandvoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesofpowerandvoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesofpowerandvoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesofpowerandvoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12200"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesofpowerandvoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12201,"href":"https:\/\/timesofpowerandvoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12200\/revisions\/12201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesofpowerandvoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesofpowerandvoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesofpowerandvoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}